Correspondence
of the Oregon Superintendency1847Southern
Oregon-related correspondence with the Oregon Superintendency for
Indian Affairs.

Oregon City 16th Oct. 1847

To
The Secretary of War
Washington
Sir
My residence in this country and the situation I
hold as the officer in charge of the Hudson Bay Co.
affairs in it from that date to 1846 has afforded me opportunity to
acquire some knowledge of the character and disposition of its Indian
inhabitants, and I am convinced that the manner in which the immigrants
travel from Fort Hall to this place will lead to trouble with them
unless the measures I suggested to Dr. White
when he left this to go home are adopted--that every company leaving
Missouri bound to this country should have a conductor well acquainted
with the precautions necessary to be taken by persons traveling from
there to Fort Hall, where the government should establish a post and
place an Indian agent who during the summer ought to have ten or twelve
steady, judicious men well acquainted with the Indians between this and
that place, and he should place one of these men with every company
crossing here who would act as conductor and manage any business the
immigrants might have with the Indians till they reached this valley,
and as it is found the best route from Fort Hall to this place is the road explored summer 1846
by Messrs. Applegate and party, as the immigrants who came by it this
season were here long before those who came by the old route, and as it
passes out of the range of the Cayuses, Nez Perces and [Walla] Walla
tribes, the best-armed, most warlike and numerous tribes on this side
of the mountains, and as the Applegate road passes through a country
thinly inhabited and badly armed, for these reasons every exertion
ought to be made to get the immigrants to pass by this route next year,
and indeed it is certain they will, a post ought to be established in
Rogue River Valley garrisoned by forty or fifty men to keep these
Indians in check and the communication open between this and Fort Hall
and between this and San Francisco--and an Indian agent ought to be
placed at this post with an Indian trader to carry on trade with the
Indians as the certain means of reconciling them to the presence of
whites on their land.
But as the Hudson Bay Co. establishment at Fort Hall
would serve as it has hitherto the purpose of a post there for the
present, the post at Fort Hall and at Rogue River might be dispensed
with for a season. But it is of urgent necessity the agent with the
necessary authority to act and his twelve conductors was at Fort Hall
summer 1848 in time to meet the immigrants.
As the agent and men ought to be persons well known
to the Indians and respected by them, such persons can only be found
among the Rocky Mountain traders and trappers now residing on the
Willamette, and I would take the liberty to recommend Mr. Robert Newell,
an old Rocky Mountain trader, as a person well qualified for the office
of agent at Fort Hall, and he should select the conductors, and if
these suggestions are approved by government instructions might be here
in June next, in time to enable Mr. Newell to proceed to Fort Hall to
meet the immigrants.
As Mr. Newell and the men he would take are settled
on their claims, they would demand what some may consider great wages.
But experience convinces that it is economy to get men who can and will
manage the business as it ought, especially at the beginning, and in
three years it will be so well established that the expenses can be
greatly reduced.
As I am informed you are the proper officer to be
addressed on business relating to Indian affairs, my duty as a
Christian to do all I can to avert evils from my fellow man, and my
desire to promote the prosperity of the country and the happiness of
its inhabitants, will I am certain be considered as an apology for
troubling you and if I can be of any further assistance command me